We met at Sally’s house, minus Jane and
Lorraine who were sadly unable to be with us.
From Goodreads.com (who gave it 4 stars)
Nobody asked questions, nobody demanded money. Villagers
lied, covered up, procrastinated and concealed, but most importantly they
welcomed. This is the story of an isolated community in the upper reaches of
the Loire Valley that conspired to save the lives of 3,500 Jews under the noses
of the Germans and the soldiers of Vichy France. It is the story of a pacifist
Protestant pastor who broke laws and defied orders to protect the lives of
total strangers. It is the story of an eighteen-year-old Jewish boy from Nice
who forged 5,000 sets of false identity papers to save other Jews and French
Resistance fighters from the Nazi concentration camps. And it is the story of a
community of good men and women who offered sanctuary, kindness, solidarity and
hospitality to people in desperate need, knowing full well the consequences to
themselves. Powerful and richly told, A Good Place to Hide speaks to the
goodness and courage of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
We were certainly impressed by the relevance
and importance of a story with which we weren’t familiar, and also by the
significant amount of research that had been done. We were somewhat less impressed by the lack
of storytelling and characterisation that could have brought this amazing tale
to life, but the author had not allowed his imagination to get in the way of a
good fact. If he didn’t know an exact
number he explained it, perhaps to the detriment of the flow, which was also
interrupted by the lack of a timeline.
People who must have been fascinating were presented just as names, and
we did not feel a rapport with them. As
one reviewer puts it, ‘This is not
"popular reading." While the author's prose is very readable, this is
a book that would appeal more to historians than to the casual reader.” We all commented that it was more of a
factual history text than we would have liked – what was missing was detail of
the everyday lives of these astonishing and dedicated people which would have
made the book come to life. Those of us
who had read it on Kindle missed out on the photos which made the characters
more real. Caroline and Jan had read it
all, but Chris and Sally were still only half way through having found it heavy
going (matched by the lemon drizzle cake!)
We are encouraged to continue though by the fact that the final chapter
has more to tell about what happened to everyone later on. Having had a look at the reviews, I feel
sorry that I didn’t get as much out of it as perhaps I should!
A worthwhile rather than enjoyable read, we
gave it 2.5 stars
We meet again at Chris’s house on 15 February
at 5pm to discuss Days without end by Sebastian Barry. Further future books/venues are:
March 15 Caroline The
Essex Serpent
April 19 Lorraine Rebecca
May 17 Jan The
Light Between Oceans
June 14 Jane Hundred
Years of Solitude
A good account, Sally. Thanks for including that outline from Goodreads at the head of your text. You have gone on to summarise our reactions to it and like you, I now feel that perhaps I should have got more out of the book. Ultimately I think it was a question of my expectations of the book in terms of being a 'good yarn' which got in the way of the detailed and conscientious account that the author set out to give his reader. Perhaps we were a bit harsh to give it 2.5 stars.
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